


Empty

by arcanebond



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, spoilers for ep 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 12:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14308656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanebond/pseuds/arcanebond
Summary: It's all he has.





	Empty

**Author's Note:**

> i couldnt not write this after that last ep oKAY

All he knows is darkness and the painful heave of his chest as its wrought with spasms. Lungs struggling to function within the confined space, his mind reeling and rattling in his skull. Thoughts were sluggish and dull, his mind an empty hall with only an unintelligible echo bouncing off somewhere too far to process, but where his mind fails him his body endures.

Trembling, desperate fingers push through plaint earth. _Out, out, out._ He needs to get out. Nothing else matters in the moment, all he can do is fight against the dirt entrapping him. He's choking on it, gasping in short and painful busts as the panic wreaks havoc through him, but his body knows it can't stop. That there is something above, something sweet and merciful. A strange sound accompanies his efforts --- he can't even tell that it's own own desperate screaming to accompany the tears trying to flush dirt from his burning eyes.

When his hands breech the surface of his grave he almost falters, startled by the shift of sensations, but he pulls through. Pushes and shoves at the dirt until he can haul himself up towards a freedom he can't even name. Towards a thing he can't fathom now, barely able to form a thought at all. Bit by bit he crawls out of the hole only to collapse on the ground once it was done, struggling to breath even then.

It's there he said, swallowing sobs until they simply wouldn't come anymore. On his back, eyes fixated on the canopy above and the bits of sky which filtered through it. Slowly, very slowly, thoughts begin to process. Little bits falling into place, but it isn't right. None of it feels right. None of it felt at all.

A hand rises to his chest, reaching to curl fingers into the fabric of his shirt. Over his heart. It's wild beating almost something to anchor himself to. He was alive. But who was he? Who was alive?

That he doesn't know.

It scares him. The sinking, hollow feeling in his chest, in his mind. It consumes him. He can't think around the emptiness.

Morning melds into day. He spends it in small motions, holding his hands in front of his face to look at them. How strange it was to feel so... disconnected from his own limbs. In place of a body where he felt like a stranger inhabiting an empty vessel. Some vagrant rifling through an abandoned, broken house with scraps of this and that, but nothing to bring life to whoever had once resided within. At some point he sits up. It's an effort, getting his body to cooperate with him when none of it feels attached. Everything just a little off, but he manages. Goes through the motions of feeling his face, bringing fingers over the interesting curl of horns, his short hair.

He doesn't even know what he is.

Eventually he finds it in him to get to his feet. An immediate mistake as he doubles over and spits bile onto the ground. It almost brings him back to the ground, but somehow he manages despite the misery. He blinks back tears and swallows down rough breaths until the nausea subsides, then he begins to walk. The slow and staggered steps of someone dragged through hell --- a hell he can't even recall. Or maybe this was the hell, this horrifying lack of self which plagued him.

He doesn't know where he's going, but among all the other things he doesn't know it's a nonissue. There's nothing, no goal, no reason, he can't even come up with why he's going anywhere at all. It's a function of some basic instinct. Something in him that told him survive, you'll get through this. You have to get through this.

The hunger and the thirst are the worst of it, a different kind of empty that almost makes the other type in him bearable. He doesn't have to think about who and what and why when the pain for sustenance is overwhelmingly loud. Days and nights all melt together and he doesn't stop. Not until his body refuses him, finally. Faithful until the bitter end. Once again the taste of dirt clouded his thoughts. The panic began to set in.

That's when they find him.

There are voices, concerned and prodding questions that he doesn't --- can't --- respond to. Words roll in and out alongside his consciousness and he finds himself unconcerned with what they plan to do with him. They could kill him for all he cares, rid him of this selfless life he'd been all too suddenly thrust into. They could, but they don't. Instead they coax water down his parched and aching throat, then load him onto a cart.

He doesn't even struggle.

When it comes, darkness is welcoming. At first. Until it twists into something overwhelming. A vast expanse of nothing that swallows him up, forces it's way down his throat and chokes him until suddenly he's back down in the ground and he can't breath and the sound is back --- he's screaming again. His eyes open and there is no grave, there are only stars above him coupled with a few faces.

"You alright there, friend?" A man asks him and he knows immediately the answer. No, no, no, I'm not okay, but he doesn't say anything. Just stares, terrified of it all. These strangers, this world, and most of all himself. The man sighs a little, but his smile is warm. "Not much of a talker I take it. That's alright, you'll come around. Take it easy, come join us by the fire whenever you're ready." Him and the other one who'd been by his side both leave.

He doesn't follow, instead curling up among the various things in the cart to try and shut it all out. There's distant chatter from the others, laughter and warmth. It makes his heart sink even further.

No one pays him much mind come the next day and he does the same. Doesn't move from the cart that he's in, refusing any helping hand offered. They leave him be and he thinks he's thankful for it, around the terror. Night rolls in and they pull off the road once more.

It's a matter of body over mind when he slowly crawls out of his hiding place. He can smell food and his stomach cramps from hunger. He stumbles forward, the world nearly toppling as his head spins, but he stays upright. Looks to all that were around the fire where more people than he realized sat. Nerves pinch tight and he feels he should run, but he doesn't know why.

The man from before seems to notice him, waving before rising to his feet. He saunters over, ignores the way he flinches as a hand rests on his back, and guides him over. "Come now, come now don't be shy. We're all friends here! You're in rough shape, sit down a spell, get some food in you." He does sit, next to the man and another. Names are given to him one by one and suddenly there is something next to the nothing. He almost feels like crying.

Through it all he says nothing, but he takes the food and eats it slowly while they talk around him. Once it's clear he won't --- _can't_ \--- give them any answers they don't press it. It's a relief when he can't even trust his own tongue. Part of him thinks of returning to the cart or maybe leaving. Who was he to impose himself here? To leech off the kindness of strangers who asked for nothing in return? He was no one. He had nothing to give them.

Not even a name.

"Come, friend, rest will do you good now that you've got some food in you," Gustav, the man from before, pulls him from the horrid trappings of his own thoughts. The cart is almost like a comfort now. Something familiar in the emptiness.

This time he doesn't wake up screaming.

One more night of that passes until they roll into a town and that's when he realizes what this is. A circus. It's a strange thing, knowing the meaning of words and not knowing much else. Had he even been to a circus before? Or only heard of them? The questions only add weight to his already heavy shoulders and make the panic grow.

They expect nothing of him as they set up and he does what he can to stay out of their way. That's when Toya first comes to him. A tiny wisp of a girl, she doesn't say anything, but he imagines she's the same as him. Trying not to hinder any of them, to stay low and not cause trouble. A few feet away the... thing watches them. Something about it makes his skin prickle. He rubs the scars on his wrists nervously.

It takes them the better part of the day to get all their tents and equipment set up. Their shows begin the next evening. With nothing else to do he watches from where he can in the back, captivated by the performances. There's life in all of them, art and magic which captives the very soul. He grips his chest which feels cold as his nails puncture his skin.

He says his first word after that. Gustav finds him slumped down holding himself, muttering it over and over like a mantra. "Empty, empty, empty, empty," he can't stop. It spills from him endlessly, over, and over, and over. The only thing that he knows. Gustav brings him back after some time, but it's not the last time it happens.

The last time is with Toya. He's been with them for some time now, though he can't say how long. It all blurs together, an endless stream of existence against the backdrop of his own nonexistence. He's more useful now, not by much, but he tends to the horses and helps put stuff away when he can. There isn't any reason for him to still be there, but then again what reason was there for him to leave? He has nowhere else to go, not that he knows of, and these people allow him to stay.

Sometimes things almost feel like they're coming back to him. Some brief sensation. A tickle in the back of his mind, like a memory blurred by time. Distorted to the point where he knows it's there, but can't make anything of it. He doesn't like it when that happens. It makes his skin crawl. Makes all his scars ache. Summons phantom pains coming to plague him of a life forgotten. Those times always drag him down to the lowest he can go and it's how Toya finds him. 

His hands are coated in ice. The humid, summer air makes it steam. He can't stop repeating that word. _Empty, empty, empty, empty,_ until it feels wrong on his tongue, but it's all he has.

"Are you hurt?" There's a cracked voice and it shatters his trace. So suddenly unexpected that he turns an almost fearful gaze to the small girl, no more a threat than a flower, yet still he seems terrified. She has her skirt bunched up in her hands and she looks worried, almost a little scared herself, but she approaches him after a moment. Sits herself down in front of him. "You don't.... need to be afraid. It's okay."

It's the first time one of them has come to talk to him. They all just leave him be without make an effort. He thought he was fine with that.

"I'm not sure what happened to you or-or what's wrong, but," her voice is so small, just like her, "you're safe here. With us. These people are good. Really good. And nice. I've never met people so nice. We're all a family here and you, you're part of that too, now. If you want to be." Warm hands encase his own even with the angry, jagged ice shards. They melt away with the touch and for the first time he isn't afraid. For the first time there is something more than nothing. There is a small dwarven girl. There is a circus. There is a life.

"... Family." His own voice sounds strange in his ears. She smiles at him and nods. "I... I like the sound of that."


End file.
